


Seeds Of Truth

by BeautifulFiction



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Pre-Slash, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-06 01:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17930489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulFiction/pseuds/BeautifulFiction
Summary: "Sherlock's a vampire?"





	Seeds Of Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serpensortia06](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serpensortia06/gifts).



Tall, pale, interesting… He should have known. Especially when Sherlock sat in Angelo’s and ate nothing. Those sharp eyes: all-seeing, all-knowing, bright like quicksilver as he stared out of the window. Back then, John had thought them beautiful. They still were, that hadn’t changed, but now there was another word that described them all too well.

Predatory.

He had assumed it was all about the case. Yeah, Sherlock was intense, but nothing had tipped him off. He had not seen anything more sinister than an infuriating, charming kind of eccentricity.

‘Shit. You didn’t know.’

Lestrade scrubbed a hand down his face before staring at him. A moment later, he yanked a chair out from in front of his desk and guided John into it. The battered old thing creaked under his weight, but he was grateful for its support. His body felt disconnected: his mind overwhelmed by Greg’s words.

‘Vampire?’ He closed his eyes, screwing up his face and shaking his head. Surely, he had to have heard him wrong. ‘Sherlock’s a vampire?’

Greg propped himself on his desk and folded his arms. His sleeves were rolled up, and a little fan squealed as it did its best to push humid air around his stifling office. ‘I thought you knew. You live with him, for Christ’s sake!’

_You see, but you do not observe._

John stared down at the small bottle Greg had given him. “Just in case Sherlock has a funny turn,” he had said. “You know how vampires can be.”

‘He never mentioned it.’ John swallowed, turning the vial in his numb fingers and watching the poppy seeds inside shift against each other like tiny insects. ‘I don’t – I –’ He huffed out a breath, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to sort out the disarray of his thoughts.

True vampires – rather than people with porphyria or serial killers with delusional claims – were all but extinct these days. Ironic, for a race that apparently benefitted from near-immortal status. John had heard of them, but he had never met one. Now it turned out he’d been sharing a flat with one for months.

‘Here. You look like you need it.’ 

He seized the steaming cup gratefully. Whatever the Met normally served had been enhanced with a liberal shot of something much stronger. It wasn’t even lunch time yet, but to be frank, John needed to take the edge off his confusion. If that meant a bit of brandy in his coffee, then he was not about to protest.

‘Start talking,’ Greg ordered, dragging his bulky chair around and placing it in front of John’s before sitting in it, his elbows on his knees and his expression intent. ‘I was bleating about this and that for days when I found out.’ He grimaced. ‘I told Mycroft he’d lost his mind. That didn’t go down well.’

‘God, is he—? Actually, that’s not hard to believe.’ John snorted, taking a big sip of his coffee. Mycroft, he could see as being a vampire. Loitering in dark car parks. Looming. Even that beaky nose of his…

‘He’s Sherlock’s brother, and vampirism – the proper kind – is genetic. At least, that’s what he told me. So yeah, they both are.’ Greg spread his hands. ‘Look, everyone knows vampires exist, all right? You could ask anyone on the street, and they’d tell you a dozen different ways to kill them. Maybe that’s why there are so few left. The thing with genetics is… well…. Survival of the fittest and all that.’

John blinked, trying to remember the two-hour lecture he had done in med school on vampirism, but so many of the facts were muddled with all the stories of popular culture. All he could recall is that they were not undead, as so much folklore claimed. Therefore, like Greg said, genetics still played its part.

That and, due to their heightened resilience to illness and injury, a vampire would rarely need any medical assistance that a doctor could offer. Now he thought about it, he’d seen Sherlock get into a number of scraps and come out of them with barely bruise.

God, he was so stupid.

‘John?’

Greg watched him, his dark eyes agleam. Perhaps he was worried that John had gone into shock at the bombshell; maybe he had. He certainly could not make head nor tails of his scattered thoughts.

‘He doesn’t have pointy teeth.’ Of all the things to focus on, John did not know why that was the first thing out of his mouth. He ran his tongue along his own molars, exploring their unremarkable edges. Blunt and boring, just like Sherlock’s.

‘No. Look, it’s not like the movies, right? No sleeping in coffins or turning into a bat, though I reckon Sherlock wouldn’t mind that bit. No burning to ash in sunlight, and I’ve watched Mycroft eat garlic bread without a problem.’ Greg sighed, wrinkling his nose before he repeated the exact words John’s lecturer had said when opening the class all that time ago.

‘Forget everything you know about vampires. It’s all a load of bollocks.’

John huffed a laugh, the glass vial holding the poppy seeds growing warm in his palm. ‘All right then, tell me. Of the two of us, it looks like you’re the expert.’

Lestrade sat back, shoving a hand through his hair. ‘Mostly, I’ve got what little bits Mycroft and Sherlock have let slip, or what I’ve seen for myself. They’re stronger than any human should be, and I swear Sherlock can hear me from three streets away. Most of the time, you wouldn’t notice they were different’ He gestured to John in emphasis. ‘These days, it’s not something people think to ask.’

‘And the blood?’ John raised his eyebrows. That, at least, was not a fiction. ‘They’re programmed differently, I remember that much. They need huge amounts of iron to synthesise one of the proteins they rely on to survive.’

Greg gave a glum nod. ‘I guess in the old days, blood was the only way to get what they needed, but things change. So much of it can be made in a lab. I mean, it’s probably like drinking food shakes instead of eating a proper meal, but that’s got to be better than the alternative. Sherlock’s not going to start breaking into your bedroom for a quick snack.’ Greg’s grin turned wolfish as his eyes danced. ‘Not unless you want him to.’

John shook his head, his smile weak. He could not even think about that right now. He was still trying to understand this whole mess. If he started considering his feelings – all those breathless moments of _almost_ – he’d lose whatever scraps of sanity he had left.

‘Hey.’ Greg leaned forward and clapped him on the shoulder in rough sympathy. ‘If I knew you were still in the dark, I’d never have said anything. Still, better to find out now than when Sherlock loses it. Gotta say, it’s more likely to happen since you came into the picture.’

‘What do you mean?’

Greg rubbed his thumb along his bottom lip, and the veil of John’s disbelief lifted. Gone was all trace of wry amusement. That expressive face of his was utterly serious. ‘As much as almost everything about vampires that ever got put in a story is a load of crap, there are some bits that still ring true.’

‘Like what?’

‘You said Sherlock didn’t have pointy teeth. I’m not sure how it works. I’m not a bloody dentist, but if something riles him up, his jaw does this… thing.’ He rubbed at his own chin, his face twisting in a grimace. ‘I guess they retract? All I know is, piss him off, and you can believe the stories people wrote about them.’

John frowned, trying to imagine it. The idea of Sherlock losing control was hard to fathom, but from the sounds of it, Greg had first-hand experience. 

‘All that strength? Suddenly it’s got a whole lot of teeth to go with it, not to mention a heap of cold fury. He’s still human – still – still rational but…’

‘But?’ John prompted, leaning forward. ‘But what?’

‘Remember the drugs bust we did on your place?’ Greg glanced towards the door as John nodded. ‘Anderson called him a psychopath. I’m not saying he’s right!’ He held up a hand, stemming John’s retort before he could argue. As it was, he felt like a growling dog, his hackles raised at the memory. ‘Sherlock corrected him. “High-functioning sociopath.” he said. Well, in those moments, that’s what he’s like. Calculating. Hard. Almost cruel. Brutal.’

Greg got to his feet, starting to pace as he tried to explain. He seemed desperate to get it right, but at a loss for words. ‘I dunno how to describe it. Justice, mercy, honour: all those concepts that society tries to build itself on? They’re irrelevant to him when he’s like that. All that bloody focus of his narrows down to the moment, and everything else goes out the window.’

Greg’s agitation was contagious, and John hauled himself to his feet, wincing as his leg twinged. It had barely plagued him at all since that first case. Now, all this uncertainty came with a price. What had been a comfortable arrangement with Sherlock was suddenly complicated. Heads in the fridge and a violin dawn chorus were one thing, but this?

‘You’ve seen it, yeah? You’ve seen him have a – a “funny turn”?’

‘Yeah. It happens when someone threatens those he considers…. well, “friends” isn’t quite the right word, but you know what I mean. I thought he was going to kill someone.’ Greg pulled a face, his expression locked in the no-man’s land between disgust and respect. ‘Some guy in the morgue, half mad with grief. He threatened Molly, and Sherlock… He values her, and so he should. Anyway, I reckon it was only her quick thinking that saved the idiot’s life. Sherlock would have ripped him limb-from-limb without breaking a sweat.’

He gestured to the vial still clenched in John’s fist. ‘Mind like a steel-trap, that girl. You don’t notice it when Sherlock’s around because he makes everyone look thick, but she’s a quick one. She remembered a story she’d heard once, about vampires and counting. Chuck something small in front of them, salt or sand or seeds, and they can’t do anything more until they’ve counted every last grain.’

John frowned. ‘That worked?’

‘Well, no. Not quite like that, anyway. The tale goes the vampire will stop to count, still be there when the sun comes up, and that’ll be the end of him. Except, if that kind of vampire ever existed, they died out, leaving the ones who don’t have a problem with daylight. They’re still a bit OCD, though. You only have to look at Sherlock to see that. Everything’s got to be just so.’

‘And the seeds…?’

‘They’re enough to make him hesitate. Enough to give his humanity a chance to gain control.’ Greg turned towards the window, staring at the dingy view before looking back at John. ‘At least, keep ‘em to hand if you’re going to stick around Baker Street, yeah?’

John inhaled sharply, those words like a knife in his gut. It had crossed his mind – leaving London and Sherlock behind. Surely that’s what any sane person would do when they found out their flatmate was a vampire? Yet the very thought of giving up the life he had built here in the past few months – one that brought him joy, rather than dreary days and biting pain…. It was unbearable.

‘Talk to Sherlock about it,’ Greg suggested. ‘Don’t worry about dropping me in the shit for letting the cat out of the bag. The worst he’ll do is sulk. Give him a chance to explain before you make up your mind.’

‘Oh, I’ll talk to him all right,’ John wet his lips, slipping the seeds into his pocket before looking Greg in the eye. ‘but I’m not going anywhere.’ He lifted his chin, daring Greg to challenge his madness. Part of him, the logical bit that often kept him and Sherlock out of the worst kinds of trouble, screamed at him not to make any hasty commitments, but it was too late for that.

Greg bowed his head, struggling to stifle a grin. ‘Yeah, somehow I didn’t think you would walk away. Most people would, but you? Not likely.’ He waved towards his office door. ‘Go on, you’d better get back to Baker Street. Tell his highness I have a case or two for him, if he’s so inclined.’

‘Will do. And Greg? Thanks.’ He held out his hand, a laugh bubbling in his throat as Greg yanked him in for a quick hug and a thump on the back.

‘No problem. I’ll probably be seeing you before the week is out, unless Sherlock finds something better to do.’

‘If he does, I’ll let you know.’

He waved farewell, striding blindly through the corridors of the Yard. One or two people greeted him, but he was too lost in his thoughts to notice their faces. His mind swirled like water circling the drain, all focussed around one certainty.

When he got back from the war, he thought he would never be of use again. Not a soldier, not a surgeon. Not a fighter, not a friend. Sherlock had changed all that. 

Yeah, Greg’s revelation was a shock, and he and Sherlock were going to have words about sharing important information, but when it came down to it, Sherlock’s nature did not change anything. He was still a bonkers consulting-detective with too much intelligence and limited common sense. He still made John’s heart leap in his throat with little but a glance and a smile.

He had brought John back to vivid, dazzling life. Back to the battlefield, as Mycroft had said. No way was he walking away from all that. Baker Street was where he belonged.

Him and Sherlock both.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Serpensortia06 for prompting me with this! It works as a standalone, but could also be the start of more. We'll see =D  
> Thanks for reading!  
> B xxx  
> [My Tumblr](http://the-pen-pot.tumblr.com)


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